Photography in Africa: Introduction

Sources. Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies, 2023

Photographic material can sometimes pose an overwhelming and distorting presence, especially when it comes to the writing of history. Some of the first visual recordings of African social worlds via photography would long serve as a model for images of the continent. This phenomenon has only been reinforced by recirculations of images from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Intended as a counterpoint, this article will contemplate a paradoxical history of photography by considering it based not on its presence but on its very absence. A work of history supported by photographic and written sources from the years 1870 to 1910, this contribution focuses on photography as absence, as disappearance, and as erasure. This implicit history focuses on various essential phenomena that characterize the (non)production of photographic images of African social worlds in the age of colonial expansion. It first deals with the key question of the material destruction of old photographs of Africa. For a variety of reasons, an entire part of what was photographed is now either lost or in the process of becoming lost. One of the long-standing major effects of this has been a double erasure of African photography pioneers, who are poorly represented or underrepresented in institutional archives and have been deprived of historiographical attention; in many cases, their history remains to be written. The article then raises the question of refusals to pose and potential refusals to take photographs. We will see several scattered traces of such evasions of photography. The problem of self-censorship and the very restricted circulation of certain images, particularly those threatening the stability of colonial narratives, will also be studied at this juncture. Finally, the article will take a closer look at the photographs taken by Alex J. Braham. This individual, a district agent in Ogugu (southern Nigeria) for the Royal Niger Company at the turn of the twentieth century, was an eager photographer. His personal album contains several shots of a secret ceremony that he took without the participants’ knowledge, having hidden with his camera in a tent. This example of concealment (not of the image but of the photographic act itself) is also one of the possible manifestations of the invisibilities that have played a major part in forming and deforming photographic imagery of Africa.

Critical Arts

History of Photography, 2021

The African Photographic Archive: Research and Curatorial Strategies, 2015

African photography has emerged as a significant focus of research and scholarship over the last twenty years, the result of a growing interest in postcolonial societies and cultures and a turn towards visual evidence across the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, many rich and fascinating photographic collections have come to light. This volume explores the complex theoretical and practical issues involved in the study of African photographic archives, based on case studies drawn from across the continent dating from the 19th century to the present day. Chapters consider what constitutes an archive, from the familiar mission and state archives to more local, vernacular and personal accumulations of photographs; the importance of a critical and reflexive engagement with photographic collections; and the question of where and what is 'Africa', as constructed in the photographic archive. Reviews “This exciting collection treats photographic images and archives as messages offered to an unknown future. Traces of past events become revelatory in the hands of these stellar contributors. This is a book that should be read by everyone interested in the potential of new practices of visual history.” – Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London, UK “This is a timely and ground-breaking collection of essays that focusses on the construction of the African photographic archive as a contested, critical site of collection, reflection and re-invention. In eleven distinctive and finely-honed studies, the archive is stretched and extended – both geographically and theoretically – so that it ranges from the vernacular to the official, the ephemeral to the artistic, while opening up to question the very terms that it puts into place.” – Tamar Garb, Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art at University College London, UK

2020

Re-staging The Fall Chapungu Technologies of enchantment Technologies Ontologies Agents Part I Technologies 19 Chapter 2 Reframing the Wonderwerk slabs and the origins of art in Africa 21 Michael Chazan Scientific isolation and its aftermath Discoveries of global impact Art as cognitive capacity Taking stock Chapter 3 Poisoned, potent, painted: arrows as indexes of personhood 31 Larissa Snow Engaging anthropology's material and ontological turns Arrows and 'the enchantment of technology' Making persons and managing relations Potent substances and important processes Conclusion Chapter 4 Relocated: potting and translocality in terminal Iron Age towns and beyond 41 Per Ditlef Fredriksen Craft identity and household spaces in the terminal Iron Age Approaching making in everyday workspaces Recipes and relocation: the use of mica in terminal Iron Age potting Concluding remarks Chapter 5 Appropriating colonial dress in the rock art of the Makgabeng plateau, South Africa 51 Catherine Namono & Johan van Schalkwyk Arrivals and departures in the landscape Rock art re-signified Clothing, costume, dress Clothing Christianity Conclusion: appropriation as a hermeneutic process Chapter 6 To paint, to see, to copy: rock art as a site of enchantment 63 Justine Wintjes & Laura de Harde Rock art as technology of enchantment The art of copying Elizabeth Goodall Diana's Vow Nyambavu Being and becoming vi Part II Ontologies 79 Chapter 7 Art, rationality and nature: human origins beyond the unity of knowledge 81 Martin Porr The paradox of modern human origins, art and culture Art, nature and humanity Art, nature and the unity of knowledge? Back to South Africa Chapter 8 Birds, beasts and relatives: animal subjectivities and frontier encounters Rachel King & Mark McGranaghan Relatives and relativism Horse-ostriches of the Strandberg Between beasts and goods in the Maloti-Drakensberg Conclusion Chapter 9 Art, animals and animism: on the trail of the precolonial 111 Chris Wingfield Disentangling the nexus On Campbell's trail Other travellers BaHurutshe art Conclusion: art and animals on South Africa's northern frontier Chapter 10 A discourse on colour: assessing aesthetic patterns in the 'swift people' panel at Ezeljagdspoort, Western Cape, South Africa 127 M. Hayden The aesthetic role of colour Evolution of a motif Polysemic implications Colour analysis Metaphoric implications of colour valence Exploring the concept of actualization Part III Agents 141 Chapter 11 Unsettling narratives: on three stone objects answering back 143 David Morris Dramatis personae Becoming iconic Answering back: an ontological turn 'Things that talk': three concluding remarks Chapter 12 Art and the everyday: gold, ceramics and meaning in thirteenth-century Mapungubwe 159 Ceri Ashley & Alexander Antonites What is art? Exploring Mapungubwe How are pots being used? Understanding Mapungubwe ceramics Conclusion Chapter 13 Presences in the archive: Amagugu (treasures) from the Zulu kingdom at the British Museum 169 Catherine Elliott Weinberg Presences (and absences) in the archive Agency and archive Biography and backstory vii Backstory (pre-museum life story): Wolseley, no ordinary 'Tommy', and Cetshwayo kaMpande Biography (museum life story): 'ethnographization' and beyond Conclusion Chapter 14 Considering the consequences of light and shadow in some nineteenth-, twentiethand twenty-first-century South African images 183 Nessa Leibhammer Introduction Scope and aim Seeing the light Away from deterministic frameworks Invocations of immanence Line and light: mission images Kemang Wa Lehulere: disrupted fields of authority Conclusion Chapter 15 The day Rhodes fell: a reflection on the state of the nation and art in South Africa 199

History of Photography, 2016

Qalqalah, 2015

2001

Preface This bibliography contains books, articles, parts of edited volumes, catalogs of exhibi tions and theses on the topic of photography and African Studies. It is directed mainly to people concerned with the history of Africa, although I hope others will find it of some use. This bibliography covers the entire continent, systematic searching ended on Septem ber 2001. Over the last twenty years a growing interest has been manifested in the use of photog raphy as source for African Studies. The theme was widely discussed for the first time at a workshop organised in London by Andrew Roberts of the School of Oriental and African Studies*. The proceedings of that workshop contain the first attempt to organise a bibliography on the subject2. The SOAS's workshop was followed by other initiatives that added new contributions to the literature which Prof. A. Roberts since then has steadily monitored. His efforts led to the publishing of two other bibliographical es says3. The last attempt in order to offer a bibliographical overview of the subject dates 1996, and appeared in African Research and Documentation, jointly edited by Judith Kisor, John Mcllwaine and Andrew Roberts4. ■ See serial number 46 2 See serial number 46, pp. 159-168, "bibliography". 3 See serial numbers 73-74. 4 See serial number 72, the work lists 246 citations. 51 am reffering to the work ofBasil Davidson and Paul Strand Ghana an African portrait, Millertone, Aperture, 1976, 159 p.